Out of the Park Baseball 15 and the Orioles' New Big Three

As long-time readers may remember, last year, I got a chance to review Out of the Park Baseball 14. And once again, for Out of the Park 15, the company once again reached out to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance to test the game. OotP has long been my favorite simulator, not only for upcoming seasons, but also for simulating past hypotheticals. And as it just so happened, I had the perfect situation to test out.

Back during Hall of Fame season, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine being up for election at the same time got me thinking about the Braves’ Big Three. And somehow, I got to wondering: could another team have won more (games or World Series) with a similar Big Three in their rotation?

And it wasn’t difficult to pick a team to test this out with. I already had a Big Three in mind: I wanted Hall-level pitchers from the 1990s to run concurrent with the Braves. Specifically, I wanted Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling, and Kevin Brown. All three have been overlooked for Cooperstown, and yet, cumulatively, they are only 13.4 Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference) behind the Braves’ trio. That comes out to a difference of 4.5 WAR per player per career, all of which were close to 20 seasons. That’s not a big difference at all.

As for what team to use, I picked the one franchise that all three played on: the Orioles. I started in 1991, the year Mussina was called up and the first season following the trade that sent Schilling (still a young reliever just getting started) to Houston. Kevin Brown is the only one with experience from this batch so far, and he’s not scheduled to come to Baltimore for a few more seasons.

More Trivia!

And, with the stunning conclusion of the NLCS, I now have all the data necessary to publish another quiz. This one is on World Series match-ups throughout history. I'm trying to think of ways to combat the scrolling needed to see all of the answers, but otherwise, it should be playable.

World Series Match Ups

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Also, some notes on the game:

Albert Pujols and David Freese both had an incredible NLCS. I would have given the NLCS MVP to Pujols up until game 6 probably. But Freese definitely ended stronger. Either one would have been a great story; the legend adds to his growing legacy, or the local newcomer makes a name for himself. In the end, I think they made the right choice (.545/.600/1.091 vs .478/.556/.913).

And hey, the third baseman won it!
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MLB.com ran a headline about a blown call that cost the Brewers a rally. Several issues with this, really. I'm all for more replay, but don't make a story out of nothing. First, the Brewers were already down by six runs (five after the play); so, they went from being down by five runs with one on and no out to no on and one out. That really isn't that big of a difference, win probability-wise. Also, Prince Fielder kind of grounded out right to the second baseman on the next play.

Even more important though; if you want to yell about the Brewers losing a runner to a blown call (as some of the commenters on MLB.com are already doing), you have to at least mention that a blown call in the first cost the Cardinals a run. (Also, if I recall, one of the TBS announcers mentioned that the umpire made a great call on that second play, even though he conceded that it wasn't right, as if that was just a small technicality).

(Also, I realize that most people wouldn't blame the whole game on this. But, for posterity's sake, I just wanted to point out that the Cardinals actually had a bigger missed call against them in the game-that would have put them up 2-0, and we didn't necessarily know at the time that David Freese would follow it up with a home run. I just have no idea why MLB.com is trying to make this call in particular into a story.)
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Also, while I'm linking to Baseball Nation, I may as well mention that I found this Grant Brisbee game update especially hilarious, for some reason.
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The other two Sporcle games that I created can be found here (ALCS) and here (NLCS).
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Also, I would like to point out that blatant homerism is apparently a great method for picking a World Series winner.

Postseason Trivia and Belated Predictions

I’m something of a trivia fan, and as such, I spend a lot of time on Sporcle.com. I’ve been meaning to make some quizzes about the postseason for a while, and I finally got time. So, for the last few days, I’ve been compiling quizzes on the ALCS and NLCS match-ups throughout history. Feel free to try them out!

ALCS
NLCS